Introduction 



a few left evidence, in the form of dried specimens, of having con- 

 tributed to the knowledge of the flora of our Peninsula. 



Dr. Wilham Baldwin* (1779-1819), a native of Chester County, 

 Pa., settled about 1807 in Wilmington, Del., where he practiced 

 medicine, with botany as an avocation. The year 1811 finds him 

 in correspondence with Muhlenberg, to whom he sent more than 

 500 of the local plants, as evidenced by the correspondence pre- 

 served by Dr. Darlington, in his "Reliquiae Baldwinianae" (1843). 

 These specimens are now at the Academy of Natural Sciences of 

 Philadelphia, where they are included in the Muhlenberg herbarium. 

 (See Pennell, 1. c.) 



Thomas Nuttall (1786-1859), arrived in Philadelphia from 

 England in 1807 or 1808. Then a youth of 21 or 22 years, he im- 

 mediately entered upon botanical studies, which were later to take 

 him across the breadth of the continent and as far west as Hawaii, 

 and were to make him one of the best-informed of our early botan- 

 ists. One of his earliest collecting trips is of especial interest to us, 

 namely, his visit in the summer of 1809 to "the mountainous part of 

 Delaware, Sussex County. "t A packet of fragmentary specimens 

 representing 43 species, collected on this expedition and sent to 

 Benjamin Smith Barton, sponsor of the trip, is preserved at the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences. 



The eccentric French naturalist, C. S. Rafinesque (1783-1840), 

 spent many years of the first half of the nineteenth century in this 

 country. He writes: "I came to North America in 1802, and trav- 

 elled chiefly on foot until 1804, over New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 

 Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, . . .". In 1804 he prepared 

 for publication "Florula Delawarica, or a Catalogue of the Plants 

 Found in the State of Delaware." However, this work was never 

 published, and the manuscript is lost. After Rafinesque's death 

 his herbarium became widely scattered, so that there is small chance 

 of locating the specimens from our state. 



Early Botanical Societies in Wilmington. Considerable historic 

 interest centers in the formation, a century ago, of two societies for 

 the study of the flora of the Wilmington area. From the minute 

 book of The Botanical Society of Wilmington we learn that "A pre- 

 liminary meeting was held 5th-day, the 5th of First Month, 1843, at 



* See Pennell: Botanical Collectors of the Philadelphia Area, in Bartonia 21, 

 466 sqq. (1942). 



fSee Bartonia, No. 20, 1. 1940. 



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